511–520 of 1001 posts
Weeks? My 0.02 is dig a bypass using dredges/pumps, then it's a 'days' problem. Of course it won't help this ship, but at least the canal functions.
The shipping lane of the Suez canal is 20 m deep and 77 m wide. The maximum ship length is 400 m, so the turning radius required to get into the bypass is literally miles long.
I don't think people are giving enough credit to how stuck the ship is. Look at some of the photos of the front of it. Look at how far out of the water it is sitting. The ship might look like that if it were totally empty, but not when it is full of containers like this. Some people saying: just drag it off of the sand. Okay! And what happens when that causes you to rip a hole into the hull of the ship? Now it's real…
There are helicopters that I think can be used for (un)loading containers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane
It will be weeks before this ship is free. Fuel and oil can be pumped out but that only makes up a fraction of the total weight of the vessel. Containers can be unloaded but again the lightest will be at the top so a significant number will need to be removed to make a big enough difference. And unloading them will be a slow process. You can maybe unload a few per hour with helicopters. There doesn't exist any infras…
Quite the arrogance here of mostly software devs trying to out -solutionize marine/shipping experts who undoubtedly have been consulted and are already looking for the quickest way to resolve the situation. With billions of dollars in stake, I'm sure even the most expensive experts are involved.
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Only about the center third of the channel is actually deep enough for this massive ship. Both ends of the ship is stuck in several meters of sand. So far they've only managed get two bulldozers on to try and dig it out but progress is slow.
Kind of amazing that in 48 hours, an event happens that threatens one of Egypts major income streams and political power sources, and the maximum they can spare is 2 bulldozers... Like why not call in the army, rent every bulldozer in the district, and within 12 hours you'll have 30 on site and be able to move a lot of sand quickly to free it?
In all fairness, all the excavator in the world probably won't solve the problem, because they have to sit on land, but the ship cuts deep.
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Dumb question: How about evacuating and then blowing up the ship? Yes, the loss of the ship and all its cargo will be immense, but that seems to be dwarfed by the damage the blocked canal causes.
Then how do you clean up 220,000 tons of debris? Turns out: the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out. And its already packed and loaded.
> the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out.
Well, evidently not if it is stuck.
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I'd be amazed if the density of weight on the ship is such that an arbitrarily large fleet of Chinooks could actually safely accomplish this. And helicopters flying in a dense formation under strain is quite likely to result in a lot of really big problems.
Yeah because what we really need to fix this situation is several hundred giant blenders exploding in mid air fireball of high velocity steel on top of the jammed ship
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Because it’s hard
Just dig a new canal around the ship? A quarter mile diversion can't take that long to dig. The whole canal is 120 miles, so an extra quarter mile they should be able to dig in a few days I would think?
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There are helicopters that I think can be used for (un)loading containers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane
Seems to have a max take off weight of 19 tons by the look of it. The heli itself weights about 9 of those tons already, which leaves 10 tons of leeway. Those containers, from what I've read around here, can be well above 30 tons each. So that sounds like a no go. Also, they built only 31 of those helis in total according to wikipedia.
I don't think people are giving enough credit to how stuck the ship is. Look at some of the photos of the front of it. Look at how far out of the water it is sitting. The ship might look like that if it were totally empty, but not when it is full of containers like this. Some people saying: just drag it off of the sand. Okay! And what happens when that causes you to rip a hole into the hull of the ship? Now it's real…